It may just simply be that on Windows the system delays part of the
creation until it is needed for display, but on OSX it is all created up
front. I noticed that it took 20 - 24 seconds to run the
setup_slow_menu function, but on my Windows box it took only 4 seconds.
I had a slight delay when showing the menu on Windows (Win7) but not
as bad as yours. Perhaps this is something that MS has improved upon
since XP.
--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
http://wxPython.org